A first novel, written as a memoir, about Cherokee women in Oklahoma who long ago abandoned moccasins for high heels and city life. Bell, herself a mixed-blood Cherokee from Oklahoma, teaches the first Native American literature course to be offered at Harvard. Narrator Lucie, now returned from California to visit her dying mother, recalls ``the secret society of Indian women, meeting around the kitchen table in a conspiracy to bring the past into the present.'' While her five-foot, 300-pound, thrice-married mother, Gracie, lies under an IV feeder in Oklahoma State Indian Hospital, Lucie visits Gracie's house, where all the lampshades and furniture are still wrapped in cellophane and plastic and a pair of ceramic Dalmatians stand guard on either side of the television. Gracie's cupboard holds an overwhelming cache of tinned Vienna sausages, Spam, macaroni and cheese, and tuna, testifying to her long years living on nothing and an unshakable fear of starving. Among the three generations of Indian women Lucie recalls are her maternal aunt Auney, who, with Gracie, sought the good times beyond Indian Territory, and her severe, full-blooded great-aunt Lizzie, to whose farm she is sent to live when Gracie's alcoholic husband, J.D., demands she get rid of the ``Injun brat.'' Alcohol makes a hell of all of Gracie's marriages, which are ties made and broken without binding legalities. Bitter-tongued Gracie forever calls Lucie little Miss Perfect, seeing the child as a moral barometer of her own flaws. Lucie's farm summer blooms vividly until a fat, sloppy woman, whining and crying in a muumuu, arrives to pick her up: her mother, whose embarrassingly bad paint-by-numbers landscapes, tatty embroidery, and deadly letters in third-grade spelling add up to a memorable portrait. Snappy, lively pages, often lyrical. Top-flight dialogue.
Pub Date: April 1, 1994
ISBN: 0-8061-2601-9
Page Count: 192
Publisher: Univ. of Oklahoma
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 1994
An author to watch, Buehlman is now two for two in delivering eerie, offbeat novels with admirable literary skill.
Cormac McCarthy's The Road meets Chaucer's Canterbury Tales in this frightful medieval epic about an orphan girl with visionary powers in plague-devastated France.
The year is 1348. The conflict between France and England is nothing compared to the all-out war building between good angels and fallen ones for control of heaven (though a scene in which soldiers are massacred by a rainbow of arrows is pretty horrific). Among mortals, only the girl, Delphine, knows of the cataclysm to come. Angels speak to her, issuing warnings—and a command to run. A pack of thieves is about to carry her off and rape her when she is saved by a disgraced knight, Thomas, with whom she teams on a march across the parched landscape. Survivors desperate for food have made donkey a delicacy and don't mind eating human flesh. The few healthy people left lock themselves in, not wanting to risk contact with strangers, no matter how dire the strangers' needs. To venture out at night is suicidal: Horrific forces swirl about, ravaging living forms. Lethal black clouds, tentacled water creatures and assorted monsters are comfortable in the daylight hours as well. The knight and a third fellow journeyer, a priest, have difficulty believing Delphine's visions are real, but with oblivion lurking in every shadow, they don't have any choice but to trust her. The question becomes, can she trust herself? Buehlman, who drew upon his love of Fitzgerald and Hemingway in his acclaimed Southern horror novel, Those Across the River (2011), slips effortlessly into a different kind of literary sensibility, one that doesn't scrimp on earthy humor and lyrical writing in the face of unspeakable horrors. The power of suggestion is the author's strong suit, along with first-rate storytelling talent.
An author to watch, Buehlman is now two for two in delivering eerie, offbeat novels with admirable literary skill.Pub Date: Oct. 2, 2012
ISBN: 978-1-937007-86-7
Page Count: 432
Publisher: Ace/Berkley
Review Posted Online: Sept. 1, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2012
At Buckkeep in the Six Duchies, young Fitz, the bastard son of Prince Chivalry, is raised as a stablehand by old warrior Burrich. But when Chivalry dies without legitimate issue—murdered, it's rumored—Fitz, at the orders of King Shrewd, is brought into the palace and trained in the knightly and courtly arts. Meanwhile, secretly at night, he receives instruction from another bastard, Chade, in the assassin's craft. Now, King Shrewd's subjects are imperiled by the visits of the Red-Ship Raiders—formidable warriors who pillage the seacoasts and turn their human victims into vicious, destructive zombies. Since rehabilitating the zombies proves impossible, it's Fitz's task to go abroad covertly and kill them as quickly and humanely as possible. Shrewd orders that Fitz be taught the Skill—mental powers of telepathy and coercion possessed by all those of the royal line; his teacher is Galen, a sadistic ally of the popinjay Prince Regal, who hates Fitz all the more for his loyalty to Shrewd's other son, the stalwart soldier Verity. Galen brutalizes Fitz and, unknown to anyone, implants a mental block that prevents Fitz from using the Skill. Later, Shrewd decrees that, to cement an alliance, Verity shall wed the Princess Kettricken, heir to a remote yet rich mountain kingdom. Verity, occupied with Skillfully keeping the Red-Ship Raiders at bay, can't go to collect his bride, so Regal and Fitz are sent. Finally, Fitz must discover the depths of Regal's perfidy, recapture his true Skill, win Kettricken's heart for Verity, and help Verity defeat the Raiders. An intriguing, controlled, and remarkably assured debut, at once satisfyingly self-contained yet leaving plenty of scope for future extensions and embellishments.
Pub Date: April 17, 1995
ISBN: 0-553-37445-1
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Spectra/Bantam
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 1995
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